


Reunion with Reg

by mysid



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 03:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8561809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysid/pseuds/mysid
Summary: Laurie hears from a former friend.





	

**Author's Note:**

> All characters belong to Mary Renault.

The maitre d’ nodded in greeting as Laurie entered the restaurant. It was not a graceful entrance. The door had a self-closing mechanism which required one hand to hold the door open; unfortunately it was the same hand which gripped his walking stick. But the inconvenience of the front door was amply compensated by the convenience of the restaurant’s location near his office. Laurie frequently came here for lunch when dining with a client and had suggested it for today’s meeting.

This lunch was not with a client, but with a friend. Or to be more accurate, with someone who had once been a friend. Laurie and Reg Barker’s initial bond had been forged in the midst of pain and fear on the blood-stained beach at Dunkirk, and, having the good luck to be assigned to the same EMS hospital, had become fast friends in the months which followed. And yet, two decades had passed without their ever meeting again.

Laurie had been very surprised when Reg had rung his office last week and asked if they could meet. Reg had explained in detail how he’d found Laurie after all these years, a tale involving an acquaintance in common and a bit of detective work on Reg’s part, but had given not a hint of why he wanted to see Laurie again after all these years.

“Your guest arrived a few minutes ago,” the maitre d’ said as he led Laurie to his usual table. The waiting man was unmistakably Reg, and yet it wasn’t. His hair had the same wave, but the colour was a faded grey-brown. The same wrinkles were at the corners of his eyes, but were engraved somewhat deeper. He’d gained some weight; he wasn’t heavy, but he did appear better fed than years ago. All the changes were subtle, but the cumulative effect left Laurie with the impression that he could have easily passed this man on the street without recognizing in him the younger man he’d known years ago. 

Reg, on the other hand, had been attentively watching Laurie since he’d entered the restaurant and had smiled nervously as soon as he caught Laurie’s eye. Of course, Reg had the advantage; he’d been waiting for a man walking with a stick.

“Spud Odell,” Reg smiled genuinely and shook Laurie’s hand. “You’ve barely changed. A bit of grey in your hair, but we all have that, don’t we?”

“Hello, Reg.” Now settled in his seat, Laurie leaned his stick in the neighbouring corner. It was one of the reasons he liked this particular table. “It’s good to see you again.”

The waiter had appeared just after the maitre d’s departure. Noting that Reg had almost finished his first drink, Laurie ordered one as well and asked if Reg wanted another. Hearing an affirmative reply, the waiter left them to talk.

“How’s your family?” Laurie asked.

“Good,” Reg replied. “I’m remarried, you know.” 

“Are you?” Laurie said to keep the conversation going without presuming to comment on the end of the troubled first marriage.

“Madge left me for good just after the war ended. This time it was with a bloke who didn’t want kids underfoot. So there I was with two boys—one still in nappies—and I needed to go to work. All I can say is, thank God for Polly. She lived two doors down and had a little one of her own. Her husband Alfie had the bad luck to snuff it just a few months before the war ended. She started looking after Peter, the baby, for me. One thing led to another, and we’ve been married ever since.” 

At this Reg pulled out his wallet and removed a small photograph to show to Laurie. Laurie saw Reg and a dark-haired woman sitting side by side and surrounded by four children. The eldest was a boy in his late teens; the youngest was a girl about three. The other boy and girl were close in age to each other, perhaps about seven years old. The elder girl bore a strong resemblance to her mother beside her, and the boys both resembled Madge. Only the youngest resembled Reg, but with her mother’s dark hair. “Photo’s a bit old. Betty, our youngest, just turned fifteen.”

Laurie was still looking for some sign of Reg in either boy’s face when Reg cleared his throat and said, “Are you—” he lowered his voice to avoid any possibility of being overheard by the waiter who’d just delivered their drinks and discretely withdrawn, “—are you and Andrew still—um?”

Laurie looked up in surprise. The Reg he remembered would never have dared to address the subject so directly. Reg’s face was a redder tint than it had been just moments earlier, and he was staring down into his empty glass. “Together?” Laurie suggested for the embarrassed man beside him. Reg nodded gratefully. “No, that was doomed before it even started. Me versus God; I was completely outgunned.” 

Reg cleared his throat again and looked around for the waiter. Laurie’s statement seemed to skirt the edge of being blasphemous, but as Reg remembered all too clearly now, Laurie’s speech had often skirted the edge of making him uncomfortable.

The waiter had been attentively awaiting some sign that they were ready for him—one of the reasons Laurie was fond of the place—and seemed to appear out of the ether. Lunch was soon ordered—Laurie knew his favourites on the menu and Reg had decided while waiting for Laurie—and a suspenseful silence settled over the table in the waiter’s wake.

Laurie was just about to ask how Reg’s elder son was doing when Reg looked down into his glass and cleared his throat again. Suspecting that Reg was working up to telling him the reason for contacting him after all these years, Laurie waited.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about and you and Andrew lately,” Reg said to his drink. “I’m sorry to hear it didn’t work out.”

“Thank you,” Laurie said, “but it worked out for the best. Do you remember that old school friend of mine I ran into in Bridstow?”

Reg looked up and nodded. “The officer?”

“He and I have been together ever since. Silver lining.”

“Good,” Reg said as he smiled slightly and looked down at the table absently. He nodded and said again, “Good.”

“How’s your eldest boy?” Laurie asked.

“Oh, fine. He’s made me a grandpa twice over now,” Reg said with a proud smile. He reopened his wallet and showed Laurie a colour photograph of two little girls in matching frilly dresses. “He and his wife live near us so we see quite a bit of them. It’s—uh—my other boy, Peter, that I wanted to talk to you about.”

Laurie now suspected where the conversation was headed and why Reg had been thinking about himself and Andrew so much lately. He merely smiled encouragingly and returned the photograph.

“He’s named after you, you know. Peter Laurence. Madge said he never would have been born if you hadn’t gotten us back together and suggested we use your name.”

“That was kind of you. Thank you.” Laurie tried not to reflect on the irony that he’d been important enough in their lives to be their son’s namesake but so expendable to their lives that he hadn’t even known of the boy’s existence until today. “How old is he now?”

“Eighteen. He’ll be nineteen in June.

“You know, Spud, back when we were in hospital together, I was certain we’d be pals forever. You don’t go through what we went through and then drift apart. I was a right bastard to drop you like that, wasn’t I?”

Laurie shook his head. “No, you were great, Reg. You tried your best to be a good friend to me no matter what. It was just more than you could deal with, that’s all. I understood.”

Reg shook his head. “I took the easy way out and didn’t stay in touch. I didn’t know what to say to you anymore.” Reg fixed Laurie with an intense gaze. “I don’t want my son to drift away from us, but I don’t know what to say.”

“You’re doing fine talking with me,” Laurie pointed out. Reg merely shrugged and looked down into his drink again.

“Has he told you that he’s queer?” Laurie asked.

Reg flinched at the term and then shook his head. “No, but there was this boy he knew, Terry. Peter would light up whenever Terry was around, and Terry was the same around Peter. It was like seeing you with Andrew all over again. I don’t think I would have suspected but for that.” Reg paused in telling his story when the waiter passed close by. He waited until he was certain they wouldn’t be overheard before continuing. “A year ago, they moved to London together. ‘Sharing the rent on a flat so they could afford it,’ was the official story. Polly and I visited Peter a few months after they moved.” Reg smiled ruefully. “I went to great lengths to avoid setting foot in their flat. I didn’t want to know if it had one bedroom or two.”

Laurie nodded. His own house had a guest bedroom which his mother believed to be Laurie’s bedroom. Since his stepfather’s death, Laurie had stopped making an effort to convincingly set the stage in the spare bedroom, but it hardly mattered. His mother believed Laurie and Ralph had separate bedrooms and would always believe they had separate bedrooms.

“Last month something happened. Peter told us that Terry moved out of the flat. Peter must have been broken hearted, but I couldn’t say anything to help. I couldn’t even ask him why they weren’t together anymore because I wasn’t supposed to know they were together.

“No offence, Spud, but nothing would make me happier than to have Peter fall in love with a nice girl and get married like his brother did. But—” 

“You just don’t think it’s too likely,” Laurie said for him. 

Reg smiled ruefully. “The plain and simple fact is, my son fell in love, and he got his heart broken. Lord knows I know how that feels. He should have been able to talk to me about it.”

The arrival of the waiter with their food prevented any immediate answer from Laurie. His first thought was that he was the wrong person for Reg to ask for advice on this matter. The sort of parent-child heart-to-heart talk Reg wanted to have with his son was one that Laurie had never had with his own mother.

“My mother still doesn’t know about me,” he simply said as soon as the waiter withdrew. Then he added, “She doesn’t want to know.”

“See, that’s just it. I don’t want my son thinking that of me.”

“Tell him what you just told me, that you know and that he doesn’t have to pretend.”

“And if I’m wrong? More than a bit embarrassing, don’t you think?”

No, Laurie didn’t think it was embarrassing, but he understood that Reg and his son would think so. 

“So, you need to find a way to let him know that it’s O.K. to tell you anything he may have to say, but you don’t want to be too obvious about what you suspect he may have to tell you,” Laurie said, and Reg nodded. “A casual mention of running into an old army buddy and then telling him a bit about me would certainly do the trick.”

Reg nodded again—a bit too quickly, Laurie thought. He realized that Reg had already formulated that exact plan. Earlier, Laurie had wondered why Reg had decided to contact him after all these years; now, it seemed he had the answer. He couldn’t help but feel a bit hurt that Reg’s sudden reappearance in his life was part of a scheme and had nothing at all to do with regret over their lost friendship. He looked down at his plate lest any hint of the hurt he was feeling show on his face.

“I’ve thought about mentioning you more times than I can count,” Reg said. “I even had an excuse to mention your name—it’s Peter’s middle name, you see. I could have found a way to start. But—I didn’t like the way the story ended, and that’s a fact. I was a right bastard to you, even if you say I wasn’t. My dropping you like that, well, it’s not likely to convince my son that I can be relied on. And what’s more, I don’t like remembering that I did act like that. I had to try to set things right between us before I could talk to Peter.”

Laurie smiled at his friend. “You have.”

“And I’ve been thinking quite a bit about you lately, wondering what happened to you after your discharge, wondering about you and Andrew—especially after something went wrong between Peter and Terry.”

“You wondered if it ever does work out for people like me—the ‘happily ever after’ part.”

Reg nodded and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “I’m really glad it worked out for you with that school friend.”

“Thank you,” Laurie said as he took an offered cigarette. “Now you can tell your son that even if it didn’t work out with Terry, it might still work out with someone else.” He picked up the lighter which Reg had placed near him and lit his cigarette.

“No one in the middle of a broken heart wants to hear that, Spud,” Reg chided. “Getting my heart broken is one thing I do know a thing or two about.”

Laurie smiled. “Perhaps you’re right. You can tell him that it did work out for me, and he can draw his own conclusions about his own chances of falling in love again.”

Reg seemed somehow to withdraw into himself as his eyes focused on some middle distance beyond the curling tendril of smoke from the forgotten cigarette in his hand. Laurie drew on his own cigarette and waited. 

“Are you happy, Spud?” Reg asked a moment before he withdrew his gaze from nowhere and looked at Laurie again. “It can’t be an easy life.”

Laurie didn’t answer immediately. He was very happy in his life with Ralph, but Reg really wanted to know if his son would be happy. “Yes, I’m happy, but I’ve been lucky,” Laurie said after thinking about how to reply. “I found someone I love, and he loves me. Many of the queer men I’ve met here and there, they seem to live very lonely lives. 

“And as for the rest, we’ve never been arrested,” here he paused to knock on the table, for the effect, not out of superstition, “and we’re both currently in careers where we don’t live in constant fear of being found out.”

“Peter works on the docks. They’ll probably beat him into a bloody pulp if they ever find out.”

Laurie knew this was no exaggeration; he had no reassuring reply. 

“You’ve never even been tempted by a girl? Not one?” Reg asked, obviously hoping to be surprised. 

Laurie smiled apologetically and shook his head. “Some of us are. My friend, Ralph, used to date women sometimes, but he always preferred men. But I’ve never come close to sleeping with one. If you want to know how your son feels about women, you’ll have to ask him. If he’s like most of us, he could probably fake it enough to get married, but he’ll never truly be happy with her. And that wouldn’t be fair to him or to her, would it?”

Reg frowned but did not reply.

“Andrew got married,” Laurie said. “He got divorced within two years. He decided to live a celibate life after that. It’s right for him,” Laurie said as he crushed out the end of his cigarette.

“I didn’t realize you had stayed in touch.”

“Occasional letters.”

“And your—your friend doesn’t mind?” Reg asked incredulously. It was obvious that he would mind if he were in Ralph’s place.

Laurie shrugged slightly. “He probably does mind a bit, but not as much as you think he should. He knows that I care about Andrew and that I always will, but he also knows that Andrew is part of my past. It’s Ralph I built a life with.” Laurie knew Reg’s reaction to this revelation of continued contact with a former love was undoubtedly influenced by own memories of being betrayed by his first wife. So he added, “He trusts me, and his trust isn’t misplaced.”

“No, of course not,” Reg agreed, “but—still—I wouldn’t like it if Polly stayed in touch with an old boyfriend. I guess it’s just one of the ways my kind’s different from yours.”

“No, it’s just one of the ways you are different from Ralph,” Laurie corrected. “Believe me, I’ve met some queer men who could teach you a thing or two about jealousy. Once, a fellow actually slit his wrist just because he saw his friend talking to me at a party. Just talking. He knew it was guaranteed way to get his friend’s undivided attention back.”

“That’s nuts.”

Laurie laughed. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. They were both surgeons. He knew how to make it look bad without actually being in too much danger, and he knew the other could suture him back into one piece.”

Reg surreptiously glanced at his watch, so Laurie signalled for the check. “Do you have to catch a train home?” Laurie asked.

“Um-hmm, but I still have a bit over an hour until then. I’m sure you need to get back to work. It was good of you to make time for me.”

“It was good to see you again.” Laurie wanted to add, “I missed you,” but he didn’t dare. There were some things a queer man couldn’t say to a straight man without a risk of making him uncomfortable. 

As Laurie was the regular, the waiter gave him the check. Reg offered to pay since meeting for lunch had been his idea, but Laurie cheerfully refused and pointed out, “I chose the restaurant.” They both understood, without it needing to be said, that it was more expensive restaurant than Reg would have chosen.

When the waiter withdrew for the last time, Laurie felt the impending loss. This long delayed reunion had reminded him of how much Reg’s friendship had once meant to him. Now the reunion was about to end, and Laurie wasn’t sure he’d ever see Reg again. Laurie deliberately smiled as he reached for his stick and said, “I hope your talk with your son goes well.”

Reg smiled back weakly. “I think I’m ready for it now.”

“Will you let me know how it goes? You know I’ll be wondering.”

Reg nodded as he stood and pulled back Laurie’s chair. “I’ll ring you up after.”

 

Laurie left the office slightly earlier than usual that afternoon. He entered the foyer as quietly as his stick and heavy shoe would allow. He could hear Ralph clattering away at his typewriter, hard at work on his next book. Ralph wouldn’t mind being interrupted, he usually stopped work whenever Laurie came home, but Laurie was struck with a desire to see Ralph absorbed in his writing. 

The desk was set in a small alcove off the sitting room. The late afternoon sun streamed in through the window before Ralph and made his fair hair glow. The clatter of the keys ceased as Ralph supported the paper with one hand and reread the last few paragraphs. 

“I love you, you know.”

Ralph turned and smiled. “I know, but it’s always nice to hear. I love you too.” He rose from his chair and put an arm around Laurie as they walked to the sofa. “How did lunch go?”

 

—June 2005


End file.
